Lit And On Fire

This week's writing prompt challenged us to think about minor characters we haven't fleshed out in other, larger written works, and write a story about and around them. - - - - - o 0 o - - - - One Fateful Night b y   J u c y Where does one’s story begin or end? Is it precisely demarcated and bookended by a birth and a death or is its timeline more jagged than one can discern? Mine began when I was born but it also started when Matthias decided to marry Isabella in 1910. Their union was the catalyst that catapulted my story into a dark container van pervaded by a stench that even death would find disgusting. My great-grandfather, Matthias, was the only son of the third wealthiest man in New York City in the 1900s; but he was disinherited when he married my great-grandmother Isabella, a struggling doctor and scientist who didn’t have a single dime in her bank account. But the two of them worked together to build a name for themselves and established the most advanced pharmacolog...

[Sixth in a series ] Sundays were supposed to be solemn days for Kiro and his countrymen; even for the most irreverent of his kind. Most everyone would usually go to a temple nearby them for worship, to light incense sticks, lift up adoration to their gods, and offer prayers for their loved ones. The most insolent of his fellow nihonjin, however, simply took time to slow down from whatever contemptible lifestyle they were used to rolling with on a daily basis. Temple worship? Highly unlikely. Kiro's mind wandered toward one particular unscrupulous malefactor. Although the specific person on his mind was a gaijin, he nevertheless speculated as to the sort of illegal downtime The Boss was up to today. As he entered the lobby of the Takashiro Trade Tower, Kiro was careful not to raise any suspicion from the security team on duty since showing up to work on Sundays was not his norm. "Overtime, Mister...?" Asano Kobayashi, the security officer on the ground ...